Leave it to Jeff Burks to turn up a bunch of images of early trestle tables that I haven’t seen before.

As you’ll see from the gallery below, these trestle tables are of the old variety – two independent horses that are topped by a large board, suitable for carving up your meal (or your unliked saint).

Most of the horses have three legs, though there are some that have interesting feet that are flat on the floor. Also interesting is how many trestles have decorative panels between the legs.

One warning before you start browsing these images: A few are a bit on the graphic side. If you ever wondered about why these tables were covered by tablecloths when people ate at them, this set of images should help you answer that question.

As always, thanks to Jeff Burks for the original source material here. His research and publishing here speeds our efforts at Lost Art Press.

As I wondered about using the 3 legged design I thought about the problem of seating people on the 4-legged-side of the table. It eventually dawned on me that you only sit on the 2-legged-side – and the servants serve from the 4-legged-side.